February 24, 2008

Gray Sunday morning at the café, I having decided church is not for me today.

Crown of Shadows surpasses my every expectation. I don’t suppose it’s going to be a great moneymaker, but it surpasses my very modest expectations even on that account. I have learned a number of things from it. The lesson which stands out most boldly at the moment is of those things I am not interested in doing anymore, and probably wasn’t very interested in at any time. If it had been purely up to me, the festival would never have happened. I came up with the idea, but without my partner Mickey and her taste for–or at least ability at–organization and plain hard ground level work, it would still be an idea. I fought my own reluctance at almost every point. They may have been my words, but her will delivered them to the community. I don’t like making schedules or finding props or coddling talent or even using the phone that much. I betray my supposed Virgo nature at every point, being–sometimes–impatient with details and blind to, or at least forgiving of, flaws. I feel the words are my duty, and other duties make me a little impatient. I can do and have done nearly everything associated with theater production, but there are certain things I hope never to be called on to do again. I can write and I can act. I can direct so long as nobody asks me where I want the lights. The days of doing it all myself are over; I just don’t want to anymore. Thank God people stepped up. Thank God I can count on people stepping up again, for I feel this experience has been good for everyone. It has one week to go, and I hate no one, and assume no one hates me, and I think that is a kind of triumph.

DJ won the raffle last night, and chose my painting French Broad at Asheville. I hope he liked it rather than thinking he didn’t dare choose something else.

Gilgamesh is better than it was at the Wortham. MM was at the show last night. It must be strange watching a new vision of a show you directed–which you were the first to direct–but he seemed to like it, and probably appreciated, as I did, that intimacy improves even an epic. These actors are better than the last batch, and the light and sound is at least as good-- infinitely better considering that Ann flushed $6,000 down that drain the first time around. The venue is problematic, but that makes less difference than one expected it would. When we arrived last night we had to disassemble a hip-hop concert before we could set up for ourselves. I did myself proud by singing as I worked, and not aiming one snappish word at those who had double-sold time we had already paid for. Like most things one wants to get agitated about, the mess and the late start ended up making no difference at all.

Actors are continually fascinating to me. Watching mine, I come to a clearer understanding of what I do that either pleases or infuriates directors, of when innovations or immediate discoveries are inspired and when they are merely weird. Everyone is doing fine, no embarrassments, nothing to apologize for. Several of our number are boundlessly talented. I seldom brag about never having taken an acting class, lest somebody say, "Maybe you should," but I always learn a great deal from those I watch on stage. A is very young and so prodigiously talented that the limits of his potential cannot, at this point, be imagined. He also has a gentle wit and personal sweetness that will fend off much of the garbage slung one’s way in the theater. I cannot imagine anyone being his enemy, or grudging him any success in the future, and this is good luck almost as great at his talent. I tell him I love him every night, and I hope he understands how literal I am. C is on some levels the best actor on stage, the best student actor I have ever known, but the best of his acting occurs in rehearsal. For performance he hardens and intensifies, and though intensity is good, too much, or intensity badly directed, is less so. He shouts all through Gilgamesh. I have said nothing beyond a few hints because he is a young actor trying something by his own imagination, and the fact is that Gilgamesh as Blow Hard is an interpretation that actually works. I sit in the dark theater and watch him veering toward the border of Too Much, but never quite hitting it, always staying within the bounds of the interpretation he has carved out for himself. It works less well with the script than the more nuanced character I thought we were developing in rehearsal, but it is a plausible interpretation, and he has the talent almost to bring it off. Plus, I’m essentially a teacher, and if he’s learning by this–I’m sure he is–then I feel he must see it through. How many times has a director let me have my head even when I made his flesh crawl? Thank God I don’t know. But the source of his interpretation bothers me more than its qualities. It seems entirely external. I’m not a method actor. I do not believe I have to have had an experience to portray it on stage, but I believe I must be imagining it honestly and completely at the moment of portrayal. C seems to be doing none of those things. When questioned about a choice he’s made, his answers cluster around the notion that a man like Gilgamesh or Gaveston should be doing such-and-such at this point in the action, a fully external and arbitrary process which harkens back to an older day of bombastic and insincere acting. I fear he is being badly trained by the theater department, which has poured all its energy into a method which teaches you, essentially, how to fake a tantrum when you need one, and not much else. The lucky part of it is that C is such a superb and dedicated student that the energy with which he is absorbing bad advice will, I am sure, be matched and over-matched by the energy with which he will absorb the good, when he learns to discern between them. Professional courtesy makes it difficult even to warn him against the baleful influence. I must rely on the gods of theater, assuming they will do what they can to lead such a bright talent down the right path. T is a completely natural and intelligent actress, always better than you think she could possibly be, always making the best of whatever awkward direction you may have given her. I dwell on her less because I think there is nothing she needs from me, other than opportunity. Her problem will be that her beauty is unconventional, and those who cast according to appearance will foolishly overlook her. We almost missed casting her as Siduri–which she does brilliantly– because she was not the sexpot we thought we wanted. We were wrong. Others, such as D, show that an actor may have fulfillment even when acting is necessarily an avocation. I don’t doubt he could be a professional actor, with his imposing (though also limiting) physical presence, and his elegant, no-wasted-energy method, but he seems to be happy here, getting better parts and more of them than anybody could in New York, having a real job and therefore a shot at a real life. The same could be said of S. The same could be said of me.

Do I love the theater? I think I kept myself from loving it as much as I could, to avoid the disappointment and hurt of betrayal by the beloved. But the more it works for me, the better I love it, and of all the things I’ve done, I think I’ve loved Crown of Shadows the best. Since it isn’t a person, I think I can say uprightly that I’ve loved it because it has been a success. I’ve never thought of myself as a "theater professional" any more than I have a "state employee" or a "Southern writer," but all those things have come upon me, and I add them, with pleasure as well as bemusement, to the tapestry. Oddly, now that I think of it, I’ve never thought of myself as a teacher, or a poet, or any of the things which should be so essential to my character, but only as little D wandering through the world, trying his hand at this and then that, hoping that they are the right things, or will lead to rightness before the end.

Afternoon: The Sunday matinee of Gilgamesh was delayed half an hour while our technician did not appear, did not answer his cell phone. I am amazed by my own tranquility in the face of such things. Word is he overslept– until 3 in the afternoon. I had to leave before all excuses were made, all explanations rendered, but it should be an interesting beginning of the week next week. I think we convinced B to adapt his ambitions for the set so that we might actually rehearse Hat. He begged at one point for two nights so he could work on the set without actors being in the way all the time. I’ll do him the courtesy of assuming he didn’t hear what he himself was saying.